Reply to Housing proposed for Tenley Library/portion of Janney site

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Reply to "Housing proposed for Tenley Library/portion of Janney site"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Who thinks it’s a nifty idea to sacrifice 40 to 50 feet of the Janney school playground so that a private developer can build  7 or 8 more floors on top of the Tenley library for upmarket flats and a handful of “inclusive zoning” units? There are few clearer examples of privatizing public assets for private profit.[/quote]

Since it is all city owned land, the affordability mix could be far greater and deeper than you posit.[/quote]

10 to 12 perecent 'inclusive zoning' units pegged at 80% ADI?  That's not affordable housing.  It's token window dressing for a windfall profit opportunity for a private developer, who gets to use public assets for private gain.   But what does one expect in the kleptocratic "District of Colombia."[/quote]

What if the proposal was for 100 percent public housing? Would you be in favor of it then?[/quote]

But it won't be.  Bowser doesn't build affordable housing.  Her view is unleash the private sector to build whatever number of upmarket housing units it wants, and trumpet the few IZ units produced as "affordable housing."

You don't believe me?  Look how the mayor, Mary Cheh, the Office of Planning, etc., are all making excuses for not backing the proposal of several DC Council members to allocate funds to purchase the Woodley Marriott hopel site for affordable housing.  It's not really about affordable housing.  It's about more market rate development, and affordable housing is the pretext.[/quote]

Yes, because dumping all "the poors: into a single location with a newly stigmatized address has proven to be such a great solution in the past.

:roll:[/quote]

You do realize that the only way to get truly affordable housing is for the government or a nonprofit to build it?  Thinking that DC will ever get affordable housing by building lots of market rate housing in the hope that a few inclusive zoning units will trickle down is, well, wishful thinking. And IZ isn’t even affordable.  It’s pegged at 80 percent AMI, so it’s a great opportunity for a young professional working for a nonprofit.  Minimum wage and poorer people, not exactly.[/quote]

In the period following WW2, private developers built millions of units of affordable housing, creating the suburbs we know now. In the process, the real estate markets in the cities those suburbs surrounded were devastated.  Our political system isn't going to allow that to happen again.

The problem in our system is that all of the players with power -- homeowners, realtors, builders, lenders -- want high values. The people who want affordable housing -- renters and first-time buyers -- aren't nearly a match for them politically. The needle that people try to thread with affordable housing is to create cheaper housing for renters without lowering the value of existing housing. Which is not really a business that attracts developers. [/quote]

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